The UK Home Office Identity Fraud Steering Committee defines identity fraud as “when a false identity or someone else's identity details are used to support unlawful activity, or when someone avoids obligation/liability by falsely claiming that he/she was the victim of identity fraud” (National Fraud Authority, Fraud Typologies and Victims of Fraud—Literature Review 2009). Identity fraud usually entails the use of fraudulent, counterfeit or forged identity documents such as a passport or a driving licence. For the sake of clarity, the term “identity document” will be used henceforth to mean documentation provided by a user to support their claim to a specified identity
Identity crimes are one of the fastest growing types of fraud in the UK. The UK's Fraud prevention service found that identity fraud accounted for roughly 50% of all frauds recorded in 2012; and that there had been a 9 percent increase in identity frauds, compared with 2011 (CIFAS 2012 Fraud Trends, 17 Jan. 2013). To counter the growth in identity fraud, a number of methods have been developed to improve the security of identity documents. In an ironic parallel with the above-mentioned growth in identity fraud, heightened security concerns and associated security awareness has led to the need for individuals to present identity documents (ID's) in increasing numbers of situations. This has led to a growing need for new identity document equipment that can rapidly read, verify, and analyze many different types of passports, documents of value, identity and security documents which employ the above-mentioned new materials and printing techniques.
In the past, digital images of presented identity documents were acquired by flat-bed scanners or specialised passport/identity card scanners. The digital images were then processed by specialised identity verification software (e.g. IDScan Document Expert System [Trade Mark]) to ascertain from specific features in the digital image, whether the presented identity document was authentic. However, this identity document verification technology, was inherently dependent on a fixed and rather inflexible infrastructure of scanners etc., which does not address the needs of the increasing demands for identity verification solutions in a wide diversity of settings.
However, the emergence of digital cameras in mobile phone devices and the rapid growth and global adoption of mobile phone technologies, have provided an alternative, more flexible solution to the challenges of identity document verification.